Can being left-handed really affect mental health?
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Started by carlberky - May 12, 2019, 1:51 p.m.

https://www.aol.com/article/lifestyle/2019/05/12/can-being-left-handed-really-affect-mental-health/23547329/

I won't argue with the findings of the studies, but being left-handed in all things, I can only say that I wish my physical health was as good as my mental health.

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By metmike - May 13, 2019, 1:02 a.m.
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Very interesting Carl.

I'm also left handed/footed for batting, throwing and kicking but right handed for writing.


I noted this in the article:

"For example, left-handers are about 5 percent more likely to have reported having ever experienced symptoms of depression," he writes in the paper, published in the journal Laterality in 2009."

This is anything but compelling to me.

 Symptoms of depression is a very subjective thing and 5% is a very tiny fraction.

In fact, I would be you, that if you did 10 studies of just random people  and broke them up into 2 groups for each study, in the majority of cases, you would not get both groups to report having symptoms of depression that were less than 5% different than each other. So this 5% number they use as evidence can easily be explained by random variation.


By metmike - May 13, 2019, 1:05 a.m.
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Which Presidents Were Left Handed?


https://www.govtech.com/question-of-the-day/Question-of-the-Day-for-02172015.html


While just 10 percent of the population is left-handed, six of the last 12 presidents have been, and many of the losing presidential candidates were left-handed, too. Some scientists believe that left-handed people are capable of “a wider scope of thinking,” a theory that explains the high percentage of Nobel Prize winners, writers and painters who are left-handed. Why most people are right-handed is unknown, but some evolutionary biologists and brain scientists believe that handedness is related to lateralization of the human brain, though neuroscience still being a young field of study, definite conclusions have not been reached.